Aleksanteri Series 2:2009

This collection of essays in honour of Professor Natalia Baschmakoff presents seventeen scholarly contributions to the study of Russian cultural history, literature, arts and society.

The festschrift is divided into three sections: Rhythms of Culture, Approaches to Modernism, and National and Imperial Dimensions. Each article offers an individual scholarly gaze into a specific topic. The topics range from an historical survey of taste to essays on modernism, Orthodox church painting, women’s writing, literary tourism, the cholera epidemic of 1892, nature preservation, and questions of national and imperial identity.

The contributors are internationally known historians, literary scholars, and specialists in Russian studies.

"[A] truly historical examination of culture demands a survey of taste as well as of the immortal and eternal works that have survived the test of time. For modern Russia the keys to such an approach – digging for the ephemeral – are found in “society”– those who saw, read, or heard works of art and culture in each successive period; in the power of the state; and in national identity."

- Richard Stites, Distinguished Professor of International Studies at Georgetown University

"The volume's first essay by the late Richard Stites effectively serves as an introduction to the volume, as well as a succinct summation of the concerns he elaborated in his magisterial histories. He calls for a "truly examination of culture" reliant upon an approach he terms "digging for the ephemeral" (p.99. Some of the essays seem to share the spirit of this exhortation, while others new light on more familiar topics."